This series, supporting degree entry recruits to the police service, aims to provide a framework for students as well as highlighting the deep resources of Policing Insight information. Policing Insight is publishing regular in-depth articles, written by Policing Insight’s Academic Editor, Dr. Carina O’Reilly, aimed at promoting new degree recruits’ learning and understanding of policing and how it impacts on the day-to-day delivery of policing.
The Police Student Content Schedule
The first tranche of articles focused on elements of Evidence-Based Policing – from the meaning of the term, and its development over the last decades, to why the College of Policing has embedded the use of research evidence into the PEQF curriculum.
Topics ranged from the research available on policing hotspots, and situational crime prevention, to the emerging evidence around body-worn video and other cutting edge technology.
We also looked at the difficulties involved in assessing research evidence in policing work – and why it’s so hard to embed the use of evidence in police organisations. All of these speak directly to elements of the College of Policing’s Policing Education Qualifications Framework (PEQF) curriculum, and will help students – and the officers supervising them – understand these key topics and develop their assignments.
We then launched a new chapter ‘Key issues in contemporary policing’ which looked at a variety of topics including models of police and policing, police culture, policing a diverse society, police priorities, use force, police welfare and much more.
The current series focuses on ‘Criminology for police officers’. At the centre of good policing is the question of why crime happens and what we can do about it. This new chapter looks at criminology – the study of crime, how we think about it, what causes crime, and the way that criminal justice agencies respond to offenders, and how all of this can affect what you do as police officers.
The summary of the series so far planned future content is as follows:
1. Evidence based policing (published)
- Introduction to evidence based policing
- The drivers of evidence based policing
- Approaches to evidence based policing: What works?
- Evidence based policing: Other kinds of evidence
- Evidence based policing in practice: Hot spot policing
- Evidence based policing in practice: Neighbourhoods
- Evidence based policing in practice: Dealing with offenders
- Evidence based policing in practice: The promise of technology
- Implementation and ‘programme integrity’ in evidence based policing
- Integrating evidence based policing in police organisations
1. Key Issues in Contemporary Policing (published)
- From high and low to consent and coercion – what is policing?
- Models of police and policing
- British policing in historical and social context
- Who guards the guards? Governance and accountability
- Cultures and identities in policing
- Policing a diverse society
- Police priorities: the rise of risk and harm
- The use of force
- Plural policing
- The police in popular culture
- Police welfare and mental health
2. Criminology for police officers (current series)
- What is criminology and how can it help police?
- Classical ideas – crime as a rational act
- Is it all in the genes? Biological theories of crime
- The ‘criminal mind’ – psychological explanations
- Sociological theories I: Social disorganisation – neighbourhoods and families
- Sociological theories II: Strain, subcultures and delinquency
- Looking at things from the side of the ‘underdog’ – labelling theory
- Who’s got the power and the money? Critical perspectives on crime
- Right realism – penal populism and the police
- Left realism – tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime?
- New penology – the management of risk
- Control theory and desisting from crime
- What about the victims?
3. Understanding the criminal justice system
4. Researching policing – theories and methods
5. Community and neighbourhood policing
6. Police ethics and standards
7. Policing vulnerability
8. Policing and cyber-crime
9. More specialist items on the curriculum:
- Information and intelligence
- Roads Policing
- Investigations
- Response policing
Students can supplement the core articles with relevant articles and reports from Policing Insight’s large archive which features over 1000 contributors from policing and criminal justice including from police, government, academia, third sector and industry in the UK and around the world. Please use the search box at the top of the page.
Students may also find the Weekly Academic Research article series useful for sign posting the latest police and criminal justice research published.
For a wider and deeper knowledge base, students should use the Media Monitor service which has over 68,000 links to articles and reports from Policing Insight and 3rd party sources. This huge resource can be searched using filters by keyword, date range, content type, subject, police force and media source.
Our researchers have searched the web you don’t have to eg a search on Media Monitor using the tag ‘body worn video’ return several hundred articles and reports that are very relevant whereas the same Google search will require sifting through thousands of irrelevant results to find useful content.
Create your own reports/briefs by exporting the search results to PDF report with live URL links.
‘The Police Student’ page will be a hub for information on the series with the latest articles highlighted here as they are published.
Be sure to sign up for Policing Insight’s weekly newsletter and daily brief as well as our social media channels to keep up with the latest content as it’s published.